Turret limit: QoL improvement idea

[SurprisingEdge]

I'm really enjoying the game, but there is one thing about turrets I'm finding a bit frustrating.

I understand the reasoning for the turret limits is for balance, to prevent just spamming turrets. I like the idea, and I think it works well, except for one thing.

At least in the early game, I have only one ship. I don't want to waste my money paying two crews. I'm mostly avoiding combat, which means I've been doing three things:

1. Mining

2. Salvaging

3. Trading

I have a ship that's very capable of all of those things, except that I have to swap turrets around constantly to switch between mining or salvaging, otherwise doing either takes way longer (because I have fewer turrets for that purpose.) I'd love it if my ship could be more "multi-role" like that. One thought I had was that maybe the limit could apply to how many turrets can be powered at a time, rather than how many the ship can have. This could work with turret groups, where I could have the mining turrets and salvaging turrets in separate groups, and only be able to have one powered at a time, because of the limit.

On it's own, that could cause balance issues, so there may need to be some "cost" to switching. At the moment, the "cost" is only in time: I remove the turrets, add the new ones, and then set up the groups. It's a bit time consuming, but mostly it's just frustrating because I can't always remember where I had the turrets. Adding some kind of delay to powering up/down turret groups would make it "cost" the same.

Maybe the turret group screen in the ship menu could have controls for activating or deactivating turrets or groups. This could be a different mechanic than the current turret group selection. Switching between which active turrets are enabled (the way it works now) could still be instant, but the new option for "powering up" or "powering down" turrets could take 5-10 seconds.

I think that would be a nice quality of life improvement that would make multi-role ships more practical.

[Dinosawer]

You can kind of doing that by adding a turret upgrade to allow you to put more turrets on, then removing it.

Of course, if you have a turret upgrade it would be silly not to use it :V

[SurprisingEdge]

You can kind of doing that by adding a turret upgrade to allow you to put more turrets on, then removing it.

Of course, if you have a turret upgrade it would be silly not to use it :V

 

Hmm, that's an interesting idea. I usually have some of the upgrade slots filled with a mining system, and some power grid upgrades so I can boost for longer, to get between asteroid fields faster. I could temporarily fill those with turret upgrades, to build turrets. The only problem then is crew. I still need more crew than turrets. It would be nice if "powered down" turrets didn't need gunners/miners, just engineers or mechanics to stop them breaking down. The time delay to "power down/up" turrets would be the crew running from one to another.  ;D

[SurprisingEdge]

Actually, I was wrong, that doesn't seem to work. The salvage turrets I added after adding more turret modules won't work after I remove the turret modules. I have only those turrets enabled (using turret groups), and I have enough gunners/miners for all my turrets (not just the active ones) but they won't work until I add more turret modules back. :(

[gimmic]

I've been juggling the same limitation.

 

Switching roles between combat + salvage, or mining.

 

I'm not sure what the more elegant solution is, but I feel like there should be one. Maybe quick-change saved weapon configurations you could apply in build mode?

 

[quailgg94]

my ship before it disapeared upon warping .... i could mine / salvage  and had  980 plus firepower . has everything to do with  the cards u put into it ... mine wasnt a ship but it was a blimp for size* and card unlocks.  make a armored  outside and Everything important inside it . i was a turd in space. im still upset it deleted on me ... i didnt even get insurance.

[Thundercraft]

Yup. I'm forced to juggle between my mining lasers and salvaging turrets rather frequently. It is a hassle.

 

This shouldn't even be an issue since I can't imagine a situation where it could help to use both mining lasers and salvaging turrets at the same time. I feel that the game should allow us to install both, be required to only hire only enough miners to handle the max of one or the other, and have a command or hotkey to swap between them.

 

(Though, I do find that salvaging turrets add a huge punch to my damage when attacking an enemy, assuming that I'm brave enough to get that close.)

[Tchey]

In many Hack'n'Slash games such as Sacred, Diablo, Grim Dawn... the is an option to equip 2 sets of weapons, and a button to switch from for example 2H axe to Sword+Shield.

 

I'd love something similar for my turrets so i don't need to change them manually each time i go from mining to salvaging.

[LordHavoc]

I've been progressing closer to the middle and found that there is a subtle natural progression that you have to employ.

Firstly, you grow your ship in size - you just have to in order to compete. As such, your crew grows, your power grows and the number of turrets you use grows.

 

I started off with around 10-12 crew, and encoutered the turret switching problem annoyance people have noticed.

But now, i'm running with a 45 crew. Have 6 combat and 6 unarmed turrets fully manned at all times - with crew to spare. And even now i'm looking to grow to double that.

 

All I'm saying, stick with it and the problem solves itself as you evolve your gameplay.

[Thundercraft]

...All I'm saying, stick with it and the problem solves itself as you evolve your gameplay.

 

That is a good point and I'm glad you brought it up. But how many hours of gameplay do we have to put up with before we can afford a ship big enough to avoid this 'swap out to mine/salvage' issue? As I said, this shouldn't even be an issue, assuming the game was designed to be more user-friendly.

 

There would be an easy workaround to this problem if we could reliably save a ship design with turrets and just swap between a "mining ship" version and a "salvaging ship" version. However, this turret bug I just reported prevents us from doing that.

 

I do realize that the game was only just released on Steam and it's going through a lot of changes. However, the early game is very important because it directly impacts how willing players are to keep playing. And that, in turn, has a big impact on game feedback, reviews, and word of mouth. Even if things get easier and more fun in mid to late game, that's no good if you lose a lot of players along the way.

[Falkenherz]

I think improving the turret build interface would already go a long way to allow for a quicker swapping-out.

 

There is a discussion in another threat that ship building and modification should be only allowed at stations, to make the gameworld a bit more having sense.

[SageThe13th]

I could see increasing the base number of turrets from 1 armed, 1 unarmed, 1 all, to 1 armed, 1 unarmed, and 2 all, maybe even 3 all.  This wouldn't greatly effect larger designs but it would make starting out less annoying.  Especially if you get RNG screwed and don't find any turret upgrades for awhile.

[RebCom1807]

What I think would be nice, actually, in addition to having some better system for dealing with multiple turret loadouts (Maybe multi-role salvaging/mining turrets? Low-efficiency, but can either do both roles at once or swap between them with ease) is have the number of turret slots that the player has scale with size, or perhaps a building component. If it's with size, perhaps every 50k or 80k (or even up to 150k) volume gets another 'All' turret slot. With a building component.. I dunno - Maybe have it be in the Nanonite tier, and have it work in a similar manner to the computer cores?

[Traciatim]

 

That is a good point and I'm glad you brought it up. But how many hours of gameplay do we have to put up with before we can afford a ship big enough to avoid this 'swap out to mine/salvage' issue?

 

Maybe 1... if even that? You start, you go get some titanium by salvage and you'll likely get a turret upgrade card. Build an actual ship instead of the starter iron junk.

[Thundercraft]

Maybe 1... if even that? You start, you go get some titanium by salvage and you'll likely get a turret upgrade card. Build an actual ship instead of the starter iron junk.

 

Let's be more specific:

 

For a small-ish ship that would require up to 2000 or so iron - without a turret upgrade module - it would only support 1 armed turret slot, 1 unarmed turret slot, and 1 arbitrary (either) turret slot. But I will allow for 1 or 2 extra turret slots from turret modules, bringing the total turrets allowed to 4 or 5. (Your ship may have 3 module slots, but I don't think it's wise to use all 3 for turret upgrades. There are more important modules.)

 

One could outfit such a ship with 3 mining lasers plus armed turrets, or 3 salvaging turrets plus armed turrets. Or, instead, one could outfit it with 3 mining lasers and 2 salvaging turrets (or visa versa), but then it would lack any offensive ability.  However, with the low tier mining and salvaging turrets that one might be able to afford or find starting out, having only 2 mining or 2 salvaging turrets makes it seem too slow to be practical. I found it takes at least 3 turrets to get the job done fast enough not to bore me - unless I install higher grade turrets, that is. And having just 1 mining laser or 1 salvaging turret would be ridiculously slow.

[eastwood6510]

I like this idea a lot.